So I've been playing since the Victor test and by no means consider myself an expert on the game. I really enjoy it.

Naval features have greatly improved since the tests, still haven't found naval units particularly useful. Especially unsure what the bireme is for? who are you going to fight?

I'm finding strategic resources are way too rare... In the game I'm currently playing I'm aware of one horse, iron and copper node on the entire continent. They're all in the same territory, which is the capital of an AI empire. It took me ~20 turns to find a single resource, strategic or otherwise.

Why are strategic resources so rare?
Why do you need 3 of something that only occurs twice on an entire continent? Usually before you can even reliably get to a third unless you massively turn up the number of islands?

I see there's a resource abundance update coming, that's good as currently some games the resource distribution is completely crippling.

AI is a bit weird. My exploring ships tend to pace back and forth between two tiles endlessly.

When an exploring unit retreats from a fight, it tends to run RIGHT BACK to where it fled the fight, immediately dying.

Why does pathing when you can't travel on deep water take units through deep water when there's a path in coastal water that will take them there without killing them?

Enemy combat AI tends to move enemy armies midway through your movement so that they always get high ground, always reduce your movement tiles and basically make a third of fights you should win unwinnable. Also tends to put your defense flag (when you should have been attacking, but they attacked mid movement) in an indefensible position. It also tends to mean that during a war, the AI will draw reinforcements from everywhere so when you were attacking one army, you actually get attacked by 3, because they moved everything into range mid turn.

All this leads to a lot of extra micromanagement of movement needed.

I don't quite understand planes. Half the time I can't select my aerodromes as the spawn point for them. Not that it matters because most of my games tend to end in the industrial era.

Not quite sure how time works in this game, but I've had games where one AI will be in space in 1700s and most other players will still have flintlocks at most.

Yesterday the player that won had also collapsed by the time they had won. Most of their empire was gone. Fame is a bit weird.

Performance is a bit of an issue, game hangs during some turns and has to be reloaded. Also late game sound tends to break and get very stuttery.

None of this is a dealbreaker for me, I'm greatly enjoying the game, I'm experimenting more, but often just get hampered by the resources issue.

Big fan of Aesthete cultures, but also find I'm still facing enormous cultural pressure late game anyway, so guess I need to work on my other stats more.

I've also noticed that when you "continue playing" all the AIs attitudes completely change. Don't know if that's good or bad, just think it's odd. Is it because the win conditions are met so they're not focused on fame anymore?

Anyway, I'm really enjoying myself and am really looking forward to seeing how this game continues to develop. Are there any plans to add more cultures?

SmileyD wrote:

For your first point i am curious on what kind of setting you are playing on, i play with max competitors on a huge world with multiple continents. And pretty much always on every single Continent there are at least 3-4 copper and horse always, iron seems a bit rarer tough(only 2 most times).  So i have never had issue with strategics at least early game ones. There was a issue with uranium and oil, but after the fix i have never had any. I am asking about settings because i think the game might base the resources on the number of competitors.

I play on huge too. that problem I had was huge with 5 continents. Half the continent had absolutely no strategic or luxury resources at all, and the only coppy, iron and horses I found were in a single territory owned by my opponent, who then steamrolled me every few rounds to take any territory I had claimed off me. With zero strategic resources you're stuck with basic units for a very long time and they definitely can't compete. Meanwhile gigirs still trample everything in the middle ages...

I haven't had as much problem with late game strategic resources except occasionally

I suppose the biremes would actually be quite good for exploring earlier than anyone else on sea.

I don't tend to play very aggressively. I'm trying am ore aggressive strategy at the moment and it seems to be working lol. Everything is a lot easier when you just take everyone else over the moment they annoy you.

Scarce strats were a problem in the early version of the game...are you playing the latest patch?

Aristos wrote:

Scarce strats were a problem in the early version of the game...are you playing the latest patch?

I am playing the latest version.
Again yesterday I had a game where I've only seen one copper on the entire continent that I'm aware of and a massive track of land (about 8 territories) with absolutely no resources at all and I started in it and had to travel through all of it to start with. It wasn't as much of an issue this time because there's basically just shallow water between the continents and I got some on a neighboring continent (all the top players are stretched over multiple continents this game from the classical era)

This is not an issue and nobody should be arguing with the OP. It doesn't matter if they're fine for you. Game set up options could include:

Super Abundant

Abundant

Above Average

Normal

Below Average

Scarce

Where are all the resources at?

Or some variation thereof.

There's no need for anyone to be excluded or not to have access to game settings that match their expectations. it's just a game and not an Olympic event.

The game has specific resource targets for units etc. The number of available resources is closely related to these targets. If you make iron in every territory you may also remove every iron requirement from all units. If instead there will be just 1 iron on the planet you may remove some units from the game, as no one will be able to build them.

So no, devs may add various resource settings, but they either break their mechanics, or still very much +/-% of the current default settings.

Katrina wrote:

This is not an issue and nobody should be arguing with the OP. It doesn't matter if they're fine for you. Game set up options could include:

Super Abundant

Abundant

Above Average

Normal

Below Average

Scarce

Where are all the resources at?

Or some variation thereof.

There's no need for anyone to be excluded or not to have access to game settings that match their expectations. it's just a game and not an Olympic event.

Yeah im sorry but maybe the people ''arguing'' with the OP have greater experience across multiple games. And are trying to share their experiences and maybe getting to the point that he just got unlucky. And even with what you suggested and you pick Super Abundant Option you can still get unlucky. Also no one is trying to exclude him, what are you talking about. Indeed from what i last saw from his reply that led him to try a new approach in the game that worked out well for him. So if anything we helped him as community, sometimes in order to help you need to disagree with someone.

The main issue here is that there's rare and then there's "one player has all the resources and others have none, leading to a feedback loop of dominance" 3 of a copper node on a continent of 2 people is probably fine as long as there's other continents to trade with, but depending on settings you might not actually be ABLE to trade with other continents until you're well past using copper.
There should be enough of resources that people can make basic units.

In that first game I was talking about they had all the copper, horses and iron on the continent, which means when they went Hittites there was absolutely nothing I could do against their chariots. Every time I started to get new territory that had *any* resources, they would immediately go to war with me and take it.

Spearmen take 1 copper. They had all the copper.
There should be enough copper on the map that someone can get *1* of a resource. If they need 3 (which some units need) that's when they should have difficulty getting it.

I've now had 2 games within a week where there was half a continent with *no* resources at all. No strategic, no luxury. absolutely nothing.
This doesn't seem like it should be the case.

Having half a continent without any resource is indeed different thing. If it's good or bad is still open question. This is likely something for game option. Personally I prefer unbalanced layouts like this.

SmileyD wrote:

Jameow wrote:

The main issue here is that there's rare and then there's "one player has all the resources and others have none, leading to a feedback loop of dominance" 3 of a copper node on a continent of 2 people is probably fine as long as there's other continents to trade with, but depending on settings you might not actually be ABLE to trade with other continents until you're well past using copper.
There should be enough of resources that people can make basic units.

In that first game I was talking about they had all the copper, horses and iron on the continent, which means when they went Hittites there was absolutely nothing I could do against their chariots. Every time I started to get new territory that had *any* resources, they would immediately go to war with me and take it.

Spearmen take 1 copper. They had all the copper.
There should be enough copper on the map that someone can get *1* of a resource. If they need 3 (which some units need) that's when they should have difficulty getting it.

I've now had 2 games within a week where there was half a continent with *no* resources at all. No strategic, no luxury. absolutely nothing.
This doesn't seem like it should be the case.

Hmm this might have something to with the game not handling there being too many continents well. And that's why you get a weird spread and very few resources, alternatively the game might calculate the resource spawn on the number of players as well. So i would suggest trying to play with just a few continents(2-3) with a lot of players and also without the new world option. Because i have noticed the game likes to place a lot of the strategics in the new world. I can of course only speak from my personal experience, but i have completed around 15 games already and never had issues with this. 

That's my thinking too. It's  certain map options not having the right parameters for the generation to work properly. The resource adjustment coming next week should hopefully fix that. It's fine not having enough of ALL resources, you can work around that an make decisions to develop in ways that compensate for that (largely), but no one should be in a position where they can't get *any* resources because they're so far behind due to starting location that there is no way to get any.

Starting a player in an area completely barren of resources stretching for half a continent puts them at such a great disadvantage that the game is basically over on turn 1, you just don't know it yet.

If you're only playing against a few other players you might be able to turn it around by going huns and mongols. If you're playing a game with more players those will already be taken by the time you get to those eras. With nothing to trade and no resources, there's no way to catch up in a large game as you will be stuck with pre copper units for the next 3 eras until you can get crossbowmen and pikemen, where your opponents will likely already have gunpowder units by the time you get to that point. If you are still alive, there is no way for you to hold onto any resources you DO get and you will be routinely be held to ransom over absolutely everything if you trade for them. You'll be forced to change religions and policies constantly by the other powers, tanking your stability.